Thursday, June 7, 2007

A "Big Silk Elephant"

One of the wonderful things about free-writing is that it's so revealing, just raw thought and emotion. This is a snippet from a much longer exercise. I'm presenting it here because it contains a singular thought -- a story maybe, or perhaps just a dream...actually just a sketch.

Free writing

He used to call the twilight of dusk a "big silk elephant", because it was gray and had big ears that could hear your thoughts, and it came up behind you and trampled over you, not hard and violent but soft, and it felt smooth on your skin like silk. He loved elephants and had a big poster of one from the circus taped to the door of his little bedroom, a room so tiny that it would probably just barely hold a real elephant. He said elephants were the most beautiful animals and you could look into their eyes and see right into their souls, could feel their stories and how sad they were because they had been taken away from the place they loved most and where they felt comfortable -- their home -- but now they were prisoners, one foot chained to a big cruel ugly stick driven into the ground by big dirty men with greasy hair and nicotine stained fingers. The twilight of dusk was like that too, sad-eyed and big and gray. One particular dusk he died and was carried out of his sadness on a big silk elephant.